Required packages

Server

Client

Only smbclient is required to access files from a Samba/SMB/CIFS server. It is also available from the official repositories.

Server configuration

The Samba server is configured in /etc/samba/smb.conf. Copy the default Samba configuration file to /etc/samba/smb.conf:

# cp /etc/samba/smb.conf.default /etc/samba/smb.conf

Creating a share

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf, scroll down to the Share Definitions section. The default configuration automatically creates a share for each user's home directory. It also creates a share for printers by default.

There are a number of commented sample configurations included. More information about available options for shared resources can be found in man smb.conf. Here is the on-line version.

On Windows side, be sure to change smb.conf to the Windows Workgroup. (Windows default: WORKGROUP)

Be sure that your machine is not named Localhost, since it will resolve on Windows to 127.0.0.1.

Save the file and then add your user to the group sambashares replacing "your_username" with the name of your user:

# usermod -a -G ${USERSHARES_GROUP} your_username

Restart Samba.

# systemctl restart smbd nmbd</nowik>}}
Log out and log back in. You should now be able to configure your samba share using GUI. For example, in [[Thunar]] you can right click on any directory and share it on the network.
When the error {{ic|You are not the owner of the folder}} appears, simply try to reboot the system.
=== Adding a user ===
To log into a Samba share, a samba user is needed. The user '''must''' already have a [[Users and Groups|Linux user account]] with the same name on the server, otherwise running the next command will fail:
# pdbedit -a -u ''user''
{{Note|As of version 3.4.0, smbpasswd is no longer used by default. Existing smbpasswd databases can be [[Samba/Troubleshooting#Changes_in_Samba_version_3.4.0|converted to the new format]]}}
=== Changing a password ===
To change a user's password, use {{ic|smbpasswd}}:
# smbpasswd ''username''
== Client configuration ==
Shared resources from other computers on the LAN may be accessed and mounted locally by GUI or CLI methods. The graphical manner is limited since most lightweight Desktop Environments do not have a native way to facilitate accessing these shared resources.
There are two parts to share access. First is the underlying file system mechanism, and second is the interface which allows the user to select to mount shared resources. Some environments have the first part built into them.
=== Manual mounting ===
Install {{Pkg|smbclient}} from the official repositories. If you want a lighter approach and do not need the ability to list public shares, you need only install {{Pkg|cifs-utils}} to provide {{ic|/usr/bin/mount.cifs}}.
To list public shares on a server:
$ smbclient -L ''hostname'' -U%
Create a mount point for the share:
# mkdir /mnt/''mountpoint''
Mount the share using the {{ic|mount.cifs}} type. Not all the options listed below are needed or desirable (ie. {{ic|password}}).
{{bc|<nowiki>
# mount -t cifs //SERVER/SHARENAME /mnt/MOUNTPOINT -o user=USERNAME,password=PASSWORD,workgroup=WORKGROUP,ip=SERVERIP

SERVER

The Windows system name.

SHARENAME

The shared directory.

MOUNTPOINT

The local directory where the share will be mounted.

-o [options]

See man mount.cifs for more information:

Note: Abstain from using a trailing /. //SERVER/SHARENAME/ will not work.

Add Share to /etc/fstab

However, storing passwords in a world readable file is not recommended! A safer method would be to use a credentials file. As an example, create a file and chmod 600 filename so only the owning user can read and write to it. It should contain the following information:

If using systemd (modern installations), one can utilize the comment=systemd.automount option, which speeds up service boot by a few seconds. Also, one can map current user and group to make life a bit easier, utilizing uid and gid options (warning: using the uid and gid options may cause input ouput errors in programs that try to fetch data from network drives):

User mounting

Note: Note: The option is users (plural). For other filesystem types handled by mount, this option is usually user; sans the "s".

This will allow users to mount it as long as the mount point resides in a directory controllable by the user; i.e. the user's home. For users to be allowed to mount and unmount the Samba shares with mount points that they do not own, use smbnetfs, or grant privileges using sudo.

File manager configuration

Nautilus

Press Ctrl+l and enter smb://servername/share in the location bar to access your share.

The mounted share is likely to be present at /run/user/your_UID/gvfs in the filesystem.

Thunar and PCManFM

For access using Thunar or PCManFM, install gvfs-smb, available in the official repositories.

Go to smb://servername/share, to access your share.

KDE

KDE, has the ability to browse Samba shares built in. Therefore do not need any additional packages. However, for a GUI in the KDE System Settings, install the kdenetwork-filesharing package from the official repositories.

Other graphical environments

There are a number of useful programs, but they may need to have packages created for them. This can be done with the Arch package build system. The good thing about these others is that they do not require a particular environment to be installed to support them, and so they bring along less baggage.

LinNeighborhood, RUmba, xffm-samba plugin for Xffm are not available in the official repositories or the AUR. As they are not officially (or even unofficially supported), they may be obsolete and may not work at all.